Genius Means Smart
by CiderApples
Summary: "You really, honestly thought that someone with an IQ of 190 wouldn't figure it out?"


_A/N: There was this scene in Lois & Clark: the New Adventures of Superman where some bad guy is talking about Lois while putting on and taking off his glasses: "Superman! Clark Kent. Superman! Clark Kent. How stupid IS she?" _

_...yeah._

* * *

"Hey," Peter said, turning to her on the couch in the middle of an uneventful evening, "remember this?" He said it fondly, romantically, and she half-smiled instinctively as he held out a photograph. It was her, the other her - the _real_ her - and him, together. On some street in New York. On a date, presumably, from the way she held the flowers.

"No," she answered. It was the safest answer. It was fine to be forgetful, but it would be terrible to be tricked. And as much as she'd gotten used to him, as much as she wasn't constantly wary in his presence, she was an agent first and foremost.

Peter sighed and flicked the photograph back and forth between his fingers, then let it tilt back toward his chest.

"Good answer," he said. "Never happened."

Olivia felt a weirdness descend. His eyes flicked up to hers.

"But a better answer would have been, 'what's the World Trade Center doing behind us?'"

"I can't believe I didn't see that." She shook her head, trying to smile, but it was difficult. Her legs felt cold and frozen to the couch. She reached for the picture. "Lemme see it again." He let her have it. He watched her study it. "I can't believe I didn't see that," she said again.

"Pretty good, right?" He put his hands behind his head, elbows out like wings. "I had the photo guys make it up for me."

"It's chilling," she said, with just the right amount of chill.

"Yeah," he said. "Photoshop aside, it's from that time we went to see your old apartment, on that case with the mesodermal projections."

She just smiled. Didn't say anything either way. Kept her eyes on the photograph. She recognized the building, at least: it was what he said it was.

"But you've never been there, have you," he said, without even the slightest change in tone. She looked up. Two even stares across the couch.

"Of course I have," she said. "I spent a year and a half there. Well, a year and a quarter, if you don't count the two months I lived with that ridiculous drummer with the-" She didn't finish before Peter reached over and lifted the photograph from between her fingers.

"No," he said. "You lived at 51_4_ East 12th. This is 51_5_. I had them change the number."

She tossed her hair again, confused. "I don't understand where this is going," she accused. Peter adjusted himself on the couch so he could face her, his back to the corner. He cocked his head. Squinted.

"You _really, honestly _thought that someone with an IQ of 190 wouldn't figure it out?"

She wasn't ready to give up. She was completely unprepared. But this was still a mission.

"I mean, they _did_ explain to you that I have an IQ of 190. Right?"

"They?" she said. Complete denial was always the right way to go.

"Wanna know the best part?"

"Is it something else I'm not going to understand?"

"Possibly." He took a moment, to make sure he was going to communicate himself effectively. "It's about me." He looked at her calmly, almost seductively, and she felt cautiously hopeful. She pulled out her most coy expression and leaned toward him a fractional distance. He smiled.

"What is it?" she said.

"Well," he started, and he actually reached out and took her hand, and that's where she got uneasy again. "I think you have this idea of me, from your side, from that story you know about the poor little kid who got stolen away. Like I'm some hero with a heart of gold." There was no warmth in the way he was holding her hand. He strokes her hand with his thumb, like he's trying to comfort her, but she knows he's going for the opposite. "But my Olivia would never in a million years try the kind of thing you're trying now, not with me. She would know I'm the furthest thing from that kind of hero."

She tried not to move, but she was starting to shiver.

"You can't be serious," she said. "It's been _two months_. If you really thought-"

"Well, sweetheart, Walter - good as he is - couldn't make the phase stabilizer overnight."

"The what?"

"The thing that's going to make your organs disintegrate the second you cross universes again," he said. "The technical details of which would probably bore you. But you can rest assured that Walter's not going to take it out until we get back what's ours."

She shook her head, awkwardly imitating laughter. She wanted to ask _where is it? _and _how? _She wanted to demand he take it out. Wanted to hold a gun to his head until he did. But this was still a mission. "Peter...this is ridiculous. It's _me_." He just stared, empty-eyed, back at her.

"If something happens to her, I'll kill you." It was simple, clean, quiet. She couldn't move anymore. She wanted to get out, to run, but this was still a mission and she would deny everything until the moment the real Olivia walked through the door.

"Peter, you're scaring me."

"See, if you were really her," he said, shaking his head, "I never could."


End file.
